The distinction between the two prominent conservative journalists isn't always obvious, but it's nevertheless important to understand: One almost exclusively writes opinion pieces, while the other offers reporting with a point of view.

The same might be said of the emerging differences between the conservative presence on the Internet and the liberal one: The right is engaged in the business of opining while the left features sites that offer a more reportorial model.

At first glance, these divergent approaches might not seem consequential. But as the 2008 campaign progresses, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the absence of any websites on the right devoted to reporting — as opposed to just commenting on the news — is proving politically costly to Republicans.

While conservatives are devoting much of their Internet energy to analysis, their counterparts on the left are taking advantage of the rise of new media to create new institutions devoted to unearthing stories, putting new information into circulation and generally crowding the space traditionally taken by traditional media. And it almost always comes at the expense of GOP politicians.

While online Republicans chase the allure of punditry and commentary, Democrats and progressives are pursuing old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, in a fashion reminiscent of 2004. Back then, the Drudge Report and other lesser-known conservative portals played a key role in defining John Kerry and pushing back against criticism of George W. Bush, such as when conservative bloggers debunked documents purportedly related to the president’s Air National Guard service.

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Just as Drudge and critics of the now-infamous “60 Minutes” report on Bush were able to push stories damaging to Kerry or beneficial to Bush into the mainstream media, liberal online organs are now doing the same, to the detriment of GOP presidential nominee John McCain.

This week, for example, a young liberal writer named Spencer Ackerman heard that McCain committed a gaffe on Iraq in an unaired portion of an interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric. Ackerman, a former reporter for The New Republic and The American Prospect who now blogs at the liberal Firedoglake site, posted the transcript and pointed out the relevant portion just after 5:00 p.m. Tuesday night.

It was picked up by the Huffington Post two hours later, discussed on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show, moved onto The Associated Press wire overnight and by Wednesday afternoon McCain was forced to respond.

“We amplify its effect and then stay on it,” explains Arianna Huffington, namesake of the popular liberal news and entertainment hub.

But the left isn’t simply promoting its own version of the news — it’s also breaking it.

Deploying writers with backgrounds grounded in journalism rather than politics, The Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo, in particular, have already become a persistent problem for McCain’s campaign, regularly posting negative opposition research and embarrassing videos in addition to advancing damaging story lines against the GOP nominee.

There is simply no equivalent on the right to these two liberal-leaning websites.

The challenge these sites present have become so apparent that McCain was forced to hire his own in-house blogger to ensure dissemination of a steady stream of anti-Barack Obama material, much of it culled from the campaign’s extensive research file.

Michael Goldfarb, a former reporter at the Weekly Standard, almost exclusively uses his blog on McCain’s website to target the Democratic nominee in the hopes mainstream reporters will link to or pick up the oppo he’s posting.

To be sure, neither of the two liberal-leaning sites — referred to online as TPM and HuffPo — have yet to break the next Watergate story this campaign.